eBay buys a shopping recommendation service

EBay Inc. has acquired Svpply.com, a venture-backed start-up whose technology enables online consumers to share products they find on the web with other shoppers.

The 3-year-old Svpply.com says it “unofficially” represents more than 70,000 stores and brands and has 1.1 million products in the shop portion of its site. Consumers who are members of Svpply.com can post products they like so they appear on Svpply.com. Merchants can also add a Svpply.com sharing button to their sites—similar to adding a Facebook Like button or a Pinterest sharing button—to encourage sharing.

EBay says the purchase gains it access to technology talent that’ll help it improve the shopping and sales experience for customers. It did not say how much it paid for Svpply.com, whose financial backers include Spark Capital and Founder Collective.

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“Svpply.com assets—including a talented team of six designers and developers—are well-suited to help eBay advance more personalized experiences and merchandising options on eBay.com,” eBay writes in a blog post announcing the acquisition.

Svpply.com says Svpply.com isn’t going away, and the site will continue to post more product picks from its members. The six-person Svpply.com team will work at eBay’s new technology center in New York. EBay has previously said that the New York center will house 200 technology-focused employees. The first employees in the center came from Hunch, a product recommendation engine platform provider that eBay acquired late last year.